“I cannot help being convulsed,” she answered, “but what do you mean by applying to the Jacobin that epithet of handsome?  Could you suppose—?”

“Not at all, not at all—­I suppose nothing; to do so would be necessary for me to be jealous.  But I cannot help saying that the preference given by your devils to the exorcism of that handsome monk over the incantations of the ugly Capuchin is likely to give birth to remarks rather detrimental to your honour.  Moreover, you are free to do whatever pleases you.”

Thereupon she left my room, and a few minutes later everybody came home.

After supper the servant, without any question on my part, informed me that Bettina had gone to bed with violent feverish chills, having previously had her bed carried into the kitchen beside her mother’s.  This attack of fever might be real, but I had my doubts.  I felt certain that she would never make up her mind to be well, for her good health would have supplied me with too strong an argument against her pretended innocence, even in the case of Cordiani; I likewise considered her idea of having her bed placed near her mother’s nothing but artful contrivance.

The next day Doctor Olivo found her very feverish, and told her brother that she would most likely be excited and delirious, but that it would be the effect of the fever and not the work of the devil.  And truly, Bettina was raving all day, but Dr. Gozzi, placing implicit confidence in the physician, would not listen to his mother, and did not send for the Jacobin friar.  The fever increased in violence, and on the fourth day the small-pox broke out.  Cordiani and the two brothers Feitrini, who had so far escaped that disease, were immediately sent away, but as I had had it before I remained at home.

The poor girl was so fearfully covered with the loathsome eruption, that on the sixth day her skin could not be seen on any part of her body.  Her eyes closed, and her life was despaired of, when it was found that her mouth and throat were obstructed to such a degree that she could swallow nothing but a few drops of honey.  She was perfectly motionless; she breathed and that was all.  Her mother never left her bedside, and I was thought a saint when I carried my table and my books into the patient’s room.  The unfortunate girl had become a fearful sight to look upon; her head was dreadfully swollen, the nose could no longer be seen, and much fear was entertained for her eyes, in case her life should be spared.  The odour of her perspiration was most offensive, but I persisted in keeping my watch by her.